2013 was a great year for the Twitch streaming community and Blizzard games. In order to give back to the community of streamers who have dedicated themselves to creating unique content, growing their audiences, and generating enthusiasm for Blizzard games on Twitch, Blizzard is proud to announce the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awardspowered by Twitch.

We're working with Twitch to provide awards and cash prizes for the best Blizzard content streamers of 2013. Award nominees will be announced on Thursday, January 30, and award winners will be announced on Friday, February 7, right here on Battle.net and on Blog.Twitch.tv.

The hard-working folks who stream content on Twitch are key members of the Blizzard community, as they share knowledge and extend the Blizzard gaming experience to viewers. We encourage any avid Blizzard gamers to join the Twitch partner stream community and to share their unique gameplay experiences. To learn how to become a Twitch partner, head over to their their Getting Started page.

For a list of awards categories and to learn how the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards powered by Twitch works, check out the breakdown below.

Thank you to the fans for enjoying our games and sharing your enthusiasm with a community of dedicated players! 2013 was just the start; we’ll be sharing our plans for the 2014 Blizzard Stream Awards with you very soon.

How It Works:

Award Categories: Together, Blizzard and Twitch have established 14 unique award categories representing streamers from four Blizzard franchises (Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft). Half of these categories are data-driven (example: Most Number of Hours Streamed for Blizzard Titles in 2013) while the other half are qualitative categories that will be voted on by you, the community (example: Favorite Community Show of 2013).

Prizes: In this program, Twitch will distribute a prize pool of approximately $45,000 for 2013 Twitch partner streamers, and prizes will be distributed evenly to each award category.

Implementation: Voting will occur for the seven poll categories through Wednesday, February 5, 2013, via the polls linked below. After voting has closed, we will announce the winners of both the polled categories and the data-driven categories.

Rules: To qualify for the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards presented by Twitch, you must be a Twitch partner streamer who streamed game content from one of the four Blizzard franchises (Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft) between January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013.

Data Driven Categories:

We will announce the categories, winners, and runners-up for seven data driven categories of awards next week. These are being tabulated by Twitch’s glistening army of robots and number crunchers.

Thank you to everyone that streamed or watched Blizzard games on Twitch in 2013. Support your favorite personalities by following the links above and voting, and please continue to watch their streams on Twitch in 2014.